Where’s the ice-man?
To the Editor,
A whole industry of yesteryear is gone. Because of common sense, it has become obsolete.
It is still a free country. If one wants to forever pay for ice to keep their ice-box operating, that is their choice. My late grandparents appreciated and depended upon that arrangement until an improvement in technology came along to favor the consumer. It did close down an entire industry, but I have benefited and have a refrigerator (that could even run on free solar energy). It is such a practical upgrade and I am now independent from forever having to regularly pay the ice-man.
In an even better manner, we can make an order of magnitude difference. Electric cars would make us independent of the oil companies. We would also be doing future generations a favor by passing on a much better world. Why do some continue to foul the air, poison water sources, violate pristine areas, etc., etc.? We don’t need any more careless oil spills or fracking or other desperate measures to drain the last drop of a limited, foul resource to help much of the top 1 percent maintain their wealth at the expense (and now this even includes compromising the health) of the masses.
It is understandable that oil-invested billionaires will resist anything that obviously threatens to expedite obsoleting their holdings. As a last ditch effort to maintain profits, they are actually even proliferating BS that most of the educated world cannot believe. Don’t heed such BS. Please use common sense and help to truly “drain the swamp.” Listen to owners of electric cars and phase out your pending obsolete “ice-box.”
Bob Fifield
Aptos
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President of the USA: I don’t want to be a sleaze ball
To the Editor,
Every kid growing up has heard it, and maybe even been told if they study and work hard they could become President of the United States, as if being President of the United States is the most coveted position a person could attain. The ultimate job one could have.
I thought that a person being president would be from our nation’s best and brightest, and a person possessing a character of an exemplary manner. In over a half century of observing the presidents of our country, I have come to the conclusion that character, and being the best and brightest, does not apply when it comes to being president. I would never in a million years, like President Trump just did, call any nation or nations, a “s–thole” country. With Trump, his profane slur was in character. He has consistently berated immigrants and spoke off color of women. I rank him already, only a year into his term, as one of our nation’s sleaziest presidents.
Arguably our sleaziest president is Bill Clinton, who, dozens of times, in various ways, had sexual relations during work hours, at the work place, with a co-worker intern half his age. Anybody else doing the same would have been out of his job in a heartbeat, but for Presidents of the United States, evidently, that does not apply. Clinton was impeached for lying under oath (but kept his job) for his work place violations.
President John F. Kennedy would have given Clinton a run in the sleaze department. Even though it was not made public at the time, Kennedy had numerous peccadilloes in the private quarters of the White House with women other than his wife, and at hotels and private residences across the country.
Lyndon Johnson, in manners and actions with women other than his wife, rated high on the sleaze quotient. Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt conducted affairs with other women during their terms. Richard Nixon waged war (secret bombing in Cambodia and Laos) while talking peace. George W. Bush drummed up a war with Iraq on a foundation of unsubstantiated allegations.
Several books have been written on and about all our presidents and the various levels of sleaze related to each. All one has to do is seek them out and read them and be informed.
If I ever have a child I would never tell them they could be President of the United States. Because sleaze seems to be a prerequisite for the position. John Cougar Mellencamp sang in “Pink Houses:” “Cause they told me when I was younger, ‘boy you’re gonna be president.’ But just like everybody else those old crazy dreams just kind of came and went.” My sentiments exactly. I don’t want to be a sleaze ball.
Charles Birimisa
Watsonville
